Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill we are debating is part of the government's NBN fiasco. Consistent with its modus operandi it seeks to minimise or remove competition and to put the government in control—government knows best irrespective of the additional cost, irrespective of the inefficiency or the waste. This government has a scary disregard for the value of taxpayers' money. Of course we know that. We well remember that, in relation to the NBN, the government did not conduct even as much as a cost-benefit analysis. We well remember that the minister, Senator Conroy, and the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, designed the NBN policy on the back of an envelope in an aircraft. They came up with 'sort of an appropriate figure that we should put to it'. To make it sound scientific they did not want to come up with a round figure so they came up with a figure of $43 billion. There was no science to it. It was back-of-an-envelope type stuff. Of course, ever since, they have been playing catch-up, trying to come up with some sort of justification for that very inappropriate way to deal with taxpayers' dollars.

In this bill the government equally has made no attempt whatsoever to maximise value for money with the arrangements that it is proposing to put in place to bring fibre to greenfield sites. The coalition supports the principle of encouraging fibre to greenfield sites, of course. I am referring here to the dissenting report that was put forward in June by the member for Wentworth, the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, as part of the advisory report on the Telecommunications Legisla­tion Amendment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011, where he noted:

While it costs more to install fibre than copper in a new development, the incremental cost is much less than the cost of installing fibre in brownfields sites. The Government’s stated policy is that in developments of 100 homes or less Telstra will install copper. The Coalition members believe this approach risks wasteful duplication with copper presumably being overbuilt within a few years if it is within the fibre footprint. On any view connecting greenfields developments to fibre must be a key priority given the cost advantage over brownbuild fibre overbuilds referred to above.

We agree with the principle of encouraging fibre onto greenfield sites. However, it is important to do it right, and that is where this government has significant difficulties—it does not think things through. It takes a very ideological approach to government and has a complete disregard for the value of taxpayers' dollars. It does not come to this with a view to making sure that we stretch the value of the dollar as far as possible and that we maximise the efficiency, the impact and, ultimately, the affordability for con­sumers. That is not the approach of this government. This is a government which is focused on putting government at the centre of all things, irrespective of whether that is the appropriate way to go. We are really concerned that this bill would further destroy broadband competition, because it would make it preferential to use the NBN. It would make it artificially cheaper for developers to use the NBN, rather than existing fibre installers, to lay fibre on greenfield estates. It would give NBN a competitive advantage in the marketplace, yet again, when there is no proper justification for doing so.

Labor is actually doing the opposite of what it promised. Senator Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, said in December last year that he would preserve the role of private fibre installers and operators. Instead he has structured this bill in a way which would further entrench his monopoly, NBN Co., which is very clearly not in the national interest. For the benefit of the Senate and for senators who might be considering their position on this bill, I will quote what Senator Conroy said in December 2010:

It has been a consistent feature of the government’s policy in new developments that there should be room for competing providers. This continues to be the case.

…   …   …

Providers can compete to provide infrastructure in new developments—for example, by offering more tailored solutions to developers or more expeditious delivery.

That is exactly the opposite of what the government is now doing with this legislation. Why is the government so intent, through the power of legislation, to give its monopoly provider every single additional advantage in the marketplace that it possibly can? It is not appropriate, but that is the modus operandi of this government.

This bill and the way the arrangements have been put together demonstrate that the government has not learnt from the mistakes it has made on NBN policy more generally. The NBN is of course a government owned company which was created to build the network. It is going to cost taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. It will have monopoly powers. The government thinks that this company should do everything. It should be in control of the whole shooting match—the whole shebang. Of course, that makes it way too expensive. It is bad for competition and it is largely unnecessary, as the private sector can do the job faster, more efficiently and cheaper, as long as the parliament and the government have set the appropriate ground rules for all of that to happen. But, no, this government thinks government has to be in charge of everything. This government does not believe in the benefits of competition. This government does not believe in the benefits, efficiency and value for money that can come from having the private sector compete appropriately with each other—and with NBN Co., for example.

I will go to the dissenting report by the member for Wentworth on behalf of coalition members of the Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network, because it raises a series of very important issues. It makes the point that the arrangements in this legislation are:

… unnecessarily slow and bureaucratic for property developers.

In evidence to the inquiry, the Housing Industry Association made the observation that:

… the legislation needs to make it very clear who is responsible for the delivery and that there are certain obligations on the provider to do that in a very timely way, otherwise it will delay development. I appreciate that there are negotia­tions in the feasibility and planning arrangements, but there needs to be that level of certainty for developers so they know who is going to do it, who is going to pay for it and when it can be done. It should not take more than a couple of phone calls and a meeting to sort out it being put into the critical path of the development, otherwise those projects will be delayed whilst certain things are waiting for a provider to provide that infrastructure.

This bill will put in place significant additional burdens that are completely unnecessary.

The other observation made in this report is that this bill is a 'missed opportunity to impose competitive and cost discipline on NBN Co.' As presently drafted, the bill does not allow us to take advantage of the existence of competitive greenfield opera­tors, which would impose effective compet­itive and cost discipline on NBN Co. I recommend the report to Senator Farrell, the minister at the table, if he is still thinking about how he is going to vote on this legislation. He should have a very close look at the report by the member for Wentworth. It is very good reading; I think he would learn a bit.

It would be way better if we had a regime where developers had a viable option to use competitive greenfield operators to build out fibre networks in their developments, because that would mean they could build the network more cheaply, quickly and conveniently. That would:

… produce a more efficient outcome if it meant that infrastructure in new developments were built at lower cost than if it were done by NBN Co under a monopoly.

It is very simple. If NBN Co. can provide the service at the lowest cost then clearly it should be providing the service. But the market should be free to test whether there is a cheaper, quicker, more efficient way to do it. Why does the government not want us to have the cheapest, most efficient way of bringing fibre to greenfield developments? Why does it want to inflate the cost? Why does it want that additional cost to be passed through the whole economy? This, of course, is on top of the carbon tax and all the other taxes. This is a government that does not mind imposing additional cost-of-living pressures on people across Australia. The approach of this government, whether with NBN Co. or with anything else they touch and stuff up, is to spend too much, to borrow—

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is waste.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And it is waste, as Senator Williams just pointed out—spending too much, waste, borrowing money. And then of course there is taxing: introducing one new multibillion ad hoc new tax after another. That is because we have this waste, because we have inflated costs, because this government wants to put government in charge of everything and because the government does not believe in the benefits of competition and because the government does not want these sorts of services to be provided at the most affordable cost.

It would be very simple to fix. All the government needs to do is go back to the policy statement the minister made back in December 2010: that he is happy to have competition. Competition is good. Compet­ition keeps providers honest. If they know they are going to face competition they know they have to be as good as they can be. NBN Co. would know that it has to perform, because if it does not perform there is going to be a private provider that might be able to do it quicker, faster and with better service. If there is that threat, it might keep NBN Co. on its toes. This government is obviously worried that NBN Co. will not be competitive. This government is worried that NBN Co. will not be able to provide value for money. So what does this government do? It puts a fence around NBN Co. It says, 'No, we don't want pesky private providers to be out there showing us up.'

If we allowed competition, people might actually realise that this white elephant we have set up is not delivering value for taxpayers' dollars. People would realise that it is just another example of waste of taxpayers' dollars and they would be even more upset about all these new taxes they face as a result of this government's persistent incompetence.

As the member for Wentworth, the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, very astutely observed, this bill is damaging to competition in the market for the provision of new fibre infrastructure, and on this point I quote him:

The regime established by the Bill is damaging to competition in the market for the provision of new fibre infrastructure. Today, as is clear from evidence provided by GFOA there is a nascent but increasingly active market in which CGOs compete to secure contracts from developers to build out fibre networks in their developments. In some cases, the CGO builds the network and then also operates as a retail service provider, providing services over the network to residents in the development.

That is a very good thing. He goes on:

The regime established by the Bill damages competition for several reasons. First, by exposing CGOs to competition from a government funded operator which is prepared to install fibre at zero cost to a developer (once the developer has incurred the expense of building trenches and other ‘fibre ready facilities’), the regime will effectively make it impossible for such CGOs to compete.

CGOs will be at a fundamental cost disadvantage because NBN Co is prepared to install fibre at zero cost, incurring a loss on the installation which it presumably hopes to recoup over time from service revenues.

This is typical monopoly-type behaviour. So you have a company, like NBN Co., which is getting not only the advantage of a 100 per cent taxpayer investment but also the advantage of the government muscle and the legislative muscle protecting its market position. Then, once everybody is sucked in, once everybody is locked in to this arrangement, nobody is going to be in a position to keep the company on its toes to provide the most affordable price and the most competitive service.

That is what this is all about. This is about locking in NBN Co. as the only viable provider, courtesy of significant taxpayer subsidies—multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidies—and courtesy of protecting its position in the marketplace through legisla­tion like this. Why is that in the national interest? It is a question Senator Mason asked earlier in relation to the carbon tax. Why is that in the national interest? And, I might say, that was a very eloquent contribution in the context of this debate.

With so much of what this government does, there is a real question mark as to why they are doing it, as to why it would be in the national interest to force people to pay more for the services that are going to be provided through initiatives like NBN Co. They would have to pay if the private sector and the competitive market out there were allowed to do its job. Through competition, within the context of an appropriate framework, you do get better value for money—better value for taxpayers' money and better value for the private money people have to pay for services they might choose to access, or might not choose to access. If there is no provider out there that can provide a service at a price people are prepared to pay, maybe there is not sufficient demand to justify the expense in the first place.

The coalition, as constructive as we are, is proposing some amendments to make sure that the current flaws in this bill are addressed. Hopefully the government will see fit to support those amendments. Senator Birmingham, on behalf of the coalition, will be moving amendments to remove the disincentives for developers to use CGOs to install fibre infrastructure. The reason we want to do this is that we want to give developers an incentive to use competitive greenfields operators in the knowledge that, if they pay a CGO on a per connection basis, they will be able to recoup that cost by selling the connection to NBN Co. We want to ensure that developers have additional choices beyond the government's default option so that when they build a new development they will install fibre-ready facilities but there will be no live network installed. We do not want people to be locked into just one option. We want there to be a series of options.

This will impose a cost discipline on NBN Co. because it will require them to purchase connections at a reasonable price, which will be set at a price no greater than NBN Co.'s own average cost of installing a connection. This will mean that, if there are competitors that can build connections at a lower charge than NBN Co., there will be a cost saving to NBN Co. and ultimately to the taxpayer. Surely that would be a good thing. I am hopeful that Senator Farrell will make it his business to recommend to the government that they seriously consider this amendment.

There will be a second coalition amendment to this bill which will seek to address the damaging effects on competition in the market for the provision of new fibre infrastructure.

The overall point is that the government has not learned from its failure around the NBN. It is wasting a lot of money. Because it wastes so much money, it has to borrow more and tax more. It is not good for Australia. It is high time that this government started to learn the value of taxpayers' money and stopped wasting so much of it.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to indicate my support for the second reading of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011, but I reserve my position in relation to the third reading. I am open minded when it comes to the amendments that will be moved by the coalition in relation to this bill. Clearly this bill is necessary, but it is the way that it is implemented that is the key question. I think it is important that we reflect very briefly on the history of this legislation.

I voted for the structural separation of Telstra last year. I did so because I supported what many independent commentators said in relation to telecommunications in this nation—that it was held back because of the vertical integration, the virtual monopoly, that Telstra had. It was necessary to structurally separate Telstra. It was a case of trying to unscramble the egg, in a metaphorical sense—very difficult. It was a difficult reform exercise, but it was an exercise that many in the OECD thought was a good thing to do because, in OECD terms, Australia really lagged behind in telecommunications reform. So I supported that structural separation.

I also supported the government's NBN bill, with significant amendments that the government agreed to that would level the playing field to enable smaller operators to compete fairly in the marketplace for business at the retail level, so there would not be price discrimination. I am grateful for the advice of Associate Professor Frank Zumbo in relation to those amendments about non-price discrimination. I thought there were some elegant ways around the concerns that were expressed by some, to make the NBN legislation fairer, to make it more effective and, above all, to allow more competition in the marketplace, which ultimately is unambiguously good for consumers.

Here we have this legislation about fibre deployment. The issue is:

It is estimated that 150 000 new dwellings and approximately 60 000 other types of premises (commercial, industrial and government) are constructed annually. NBN Co has calculated that 94 per cent of these new premises (or around 197 000) will be within the fibre footprint.

I am quoting directly from the recent report of the Joint Committee on the NBN, a committee that was established as a result of the negotiations I had with the Prime Minister last year in relation to my support for the NBN legislation. The Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network is an important transparency and accountability mechanism for the rollout of Australia's biggest infrastructure project. The committee report indicates:

The cost of installing fibre-ready infrastructure has been estimated at about $800 per lot or building unit. The cost of retrofit of fibre where no passive infrastructure has been supplied is estimated to be approximately $1300 a lot or unit.

The legislation will be reviewed in five years to assess if it is still required. This legislation essentially is saying that NBN Co. will be responsible for fibre installation for all premises in the fibre footprint which are at the development stage. In other words, NBN Co. will be given a virtual monopoly for those greenfield sites. That applies to all broadacre developments, all infill developments where it has fibre that is ready for service and capable of connection and new approved infill developments of 100 or more premises.

Those are the basic criteria, but there have been concerns expressed. In the course of the inquiry, while the majority of contributors agreed with the general premise of the bill, there were a number of commercial fibre providers and industry groups that raised concerns about the bill's potential to do a number of things. Again quoting from the committee report, which I think gives a very fair summary of the evidence, the concerns were that it could:

There was a concern that those smaller providers would be disadvantaged. That itself should not be the only criterion. But, if the consequence of those providers being disadvantaged is that you have less competition and a blowing-out of costs and it puts those smaller providers at an unnecessary competitive disadvantage, then these are matters that we ought to be concerned about. The legislation outlines NBN Co. as a fibre provider of last resort. But the concern is that the way that this is structured means that effectively it will be a provider of first resort. That, to me, may pose a number of issues. A number of concerns have been expressed by the GFOA, Greenfield Fibre Operators in Australia, and I think those concerns have merit. Those concerns included, as I indicated, that NBN Co. is in fact promoting itself as a provider of first choice and not of last resort as is intended in the legislation. In other words, the structure of it, despite what the legislation says, is quite the opposite of what it is meant to be.

Another concern is that the Australian government is ignoring its own competitive neutrality policy for government owned businesses. This policy, it is important to note, dictates that no competitive advantages should be given to government owned businesses over private sector competitors by virtue of their public sector ownership, nor by using their fiscal or legislative powers. All those elements are blended into this.

I have never had an issue with NBN Co. being a government owned enterprise. For such a major piece of infrastructure that has the potential to be a nation-building piece of infrastructure that will improve telecom­munications and include a whole range of benefits that go with that, whether in health, commerce or technological advances, I think it is important that we have it set up as a statutory entity, as a government business enterprise, for when there is market failure. But it is important that it operates fairly.

A concern with this bill that the greenfield operators have indicated is that, if the bill is not amended to provide for protections and to encourage competition in deployment and the operation of fibre networks in green­fields, the competitive neutrality policy of the Commonwealth government will effectively be abandoned. There is a real concern about that. The government has responded to those concerns and it has discussed them comprehensively in the report, but the concerns of greenfield operators have not been addressed in the bill in its current form. I propose to detail and discuss this further. I think it is appropriate that the government be robustly questioned in the committee stage about the whole issue of competitive neutrality.

The greenfield operators association has indicated that two of its members have lodged complaints with the Australian Government Competitive Neutrality Com­plaints Office—it has the acronym AGCNCO; I have no idea how you would pronounce that!—situated within the Productivity Commission. This office is yet to report on the matters raised. That concerns me too because it clearly is a complex issue.

Another issue is: what do you do with services for new developments of fewer than 100 premises? TransACT here in the Australian Capital Territory has expressed some concerns in relation to this. It is concerned that there will be an anti-competitive and unlevel playing field for other infrastructure and service providers. This is what it stated in its submission:

This process has the potential to create a ‘digital divide’ between developments with less than 100 premises and those with more than 100 premises, both during and after the roll out of the NBN. It also creates an anti-competitive and unlevel playing field for other infrastructure and service providers. It seems that Telstra could determine unilaterally that it will service a development with a fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) or fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) solution, or even a mobile voice and broadband solution, which would prevent other service providers from accessing those networks given they are not regulated. This would further entrench Telstra as the monopoly provider in these markets, while also giving it first mover advantage to acquire the end-users as Telstra Retail customers, pending migration to NBN Co’s fibre network.

The concern raised by TransACT goes beyond complaints; it goes to some broader principles. It goes to the whole reason why we went through the very painful and costly process of structurally separating Telstra with the multibillion dollar deal to induce them to go down this path. It goes to the issue of whether we are replacing one monopoly with another, in the process giving Telstra some in-built advantages. I thought the reason we went down the structural separation path, which I supported, was to free up the telecommunications market to make it more dynamic, competitive, effective and consumer friendly in the sense that with more competition consumers get a better deal, price and product. TransACT is expressing very serious concerns about that. The broader implications of that worry me.

TransACT has suggested that the bill should be amended to:

… include provisions that ensure these developments are serviced by copper from the local telephone exchange wherever reasonably possible. This would ensure the ULLS26—

which I am sure means a lot to the six people listening to this on the parliamentary news network—

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's not true.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's not true?

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thousands.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thousands or dozens? If I may continue after that very unhelpful interjection by Senator Mason, the quote continues:

… is available to other service providers during the transitional period, prior to the NBN Co fibre deployment.

I think we should listen to TransACT—the ACT government, in effect—in relation to the fact that we might be entrenching further advantage to Telstra. We might be entrenching a further loss of competition and competitive neutrality with this. That concerns me.

I think it is important that where there is a greenfield site it be fibre ready. But it ought to be fibre ready so that you do not have a situation where existing operators—the small end of town, if you like—are being squeezed out by both Telstra, for some of those developments of 100 premises or fewer, and NBN Co.

I think it is worth indicating that the Housing Industry Association has advised that developers reported a cost of installing fibre to the premises in the range of $2,500 to $3,500 per premise. With additional installation costs, taxes, charges and developer margins, the cost will be up in the order of $5,000. The HIA stated:

Based on the numbers provided to HIA, the average cost to the developer per block for FTTP is in the range of $2500 ‐ $3500.

The submission goes on to say that, when combined with additional costs, it is about $5,000. I think there are concerns about the robustness of the costings that have been put out by NBN Co. That needs to be tested. I do support the concept of a national broadband network, but it must be implemented in a way that gives the best value to taxpayers of the use of our funds, of all Australian taxpayers' funds. It must be set up in a way that genuinely enhances competition. It must be established in a way that gives better service than what we have had in the past. It must be set up in a way that ensures that we do not replace one monopoly, Telstra—which constrained telecommunications in this country—with another, NBN Co.

Therefore, whilst I support the principle of this bill and I support the second reading of this bill, I will very closely look at the amendments being proposed, particularly by the coalition, to see if they will improve it. If the coalition's amendments will stymie the effective and efficient rollout of the NBN then of course I am not likely to support those amendments. But if those amendments will genuinely enhance competition, give a level playing field for the small business sector and ensure the principles of competitive neutrality, then those amendments will have my support.

I hope that the minister, Senator Conroy, who has a real passion for the NBN, who has driven the reform on this, will note that my questions in the committee stage come from a genuine basis of wanting this to work in the most effective, efficient way possible to ensure that we do not end up with a son of Telstra with the NBN, which I hope will not be the case. That is why we should not dismiss out of hand a number of the amendments proposed by the coalition or at least deal with some of the serious concerns expressed in a sense by those amendments. I support the second reading of the bill.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will leave the technical details of the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Fibre Deployment) Bill 2011 to my colleagues that have greater expertise in the area of telecommunications and broad­band. What I want to do is make some brief remarks about the NBN and reflect on the relevance of that project to the government's recent record in adminis­tration—or should I say maladministration.

The Australian people now know there is one thing worse than the Labor government breaking its election promise. And what is that? It is when the Labor government actually sticks to its election promises, when it keeps its commitments. You see, the achilles heel of this government, of the Australian Labor Party, of the Rudd-Gillard governments, has always been the implementation of their programs. That is their great weakness. It has been from 2007, for nearly four years now, under this government. The list of failures and disappointments has been as long as it has been shameful. Some of it might have even been mildly amusing if not for the fact that billions of taxpayers' dollars have been wasted and, in some cases, lives lost.

There has been the farce of GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch, two websites supposedly designed to ease the pressures on the cost of living. The idea was that, if the government kept watching, the price of cabbages and the price of unleaded petrol would come down. Instead they went up. Perhaps they should stop watching. After the fiasco of GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch, many have said, 'If we can't trust the government to keep the price of onions down, how can we trust them to control the world climate?' or, indeed, as is being debated today, 'How can we trust them with spending tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars on internet infra­structure with the NBN?' And how right they were. After GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch we have had the fiasco of the pink batts, the installation scheme that was compromised by widespread rorting, that put hundreds of thousands of homes at risk, that caused 200 house fires and four deaths and that cost the taxpayer billions of dollars to roll out and then tens of millions of dollars more to clean up—an absolute and utter fiasco.

Perhaps the most spectacular example of the Rudd-Gillard government's imple­mentation failure has been in my shadow portfolio area of education. First, we had the computers in schools fiasco arising from Kevin 07's election promise to give every one of Australia's one million secondary students their own laptop. How I remember those election ads with the then Leader of the Opposition holding a laptop computer and saying, 'One of these will go to every student. This is the toolbox of the 21st century.' How could we forget it? So what has happened? Nearly four years on we know that the scheme has been under­budgeted by up to 500 per cent, with the Commonwealth forced to kick in extra money and an unwelcome financial burden falling on state governments and also of course on the parents of those children. We also know that the rollout is way behind. At budget estimates we found that only 55 per cent of the just under 800,000 required had been delivered and installed, with a deadline looming on 31 December this year. Lastly, not a single one of those 800,000 computers promised has been connected by the Commonwealth to the fast, up to 100 megabits per second fibre broadband as Kevin 07 promised.

But if we thought the laptop fiasco was bad, the $16.2 billion Building the Education Revolution program, colloquially known as the Julia Gillard memorial school halls program, has truly won infamy in the annals of government incompetence, waste and mismanagement in this country. The BER has been a fiasco. In the end, the government hand-picked BER Chairman, Brad Orgill, who has been forced to admit something that everyone in the community and the coalition have been saying right from the start—that is, that government school projects, particularly in the three biggest states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland have been overcharged, when compared to their Catholic and independent equivalents. Do not believe me; read the Orgill report. That is a disgrace. Those kids who go to government schools—like I did—missed out when compared to kids at Catholic and private schools. That is disgraceful from a party that, allegedly, stands up for the parents of those children.

But, by then, billions of dollars had already been wasted by Labor state governments, confirming the Common­wealth Auditor-General's finding that the Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations did not put in place sufficient oversight mechanisms so they could even assure themselves that they were getting good value for money. I did not find that; the Auditor-General found that. He found that the Labor Party spent $16 billion and that the Commonwealth department of education did not have the oversight mechanisms to ensure that those schools were providing value for money. Is that a disgrace or not? The sum of $16 billion, spent by this lot, and not even appropriate oversight mechanisms to ensure that it was money well spent. They sit there, trumpeting the BER as money well spent. The Auditor-General has said that the money was badly spent.

I am not recalling any of these instances for my own pleasure—on the contrary—although I am getting pleasure. It pains, at least, the opposition—not that lot over there—to see billions of taxpayers' hard-earned dollars flushed down the fiscal toilet. Some of the ideas were not too bad, but they were a shambles in the implementation. The ideas were battered to death by the appalling implementation of the Labor Party.

All these fiascos share commonalities that tell us a lot about the government's approach to policy implementation—a pattern, I fear, that we will see repeated on a much more monumental scale. On what? The rollout of the NBN. If you think the BER has been bad, just wait for the NBN—this shame of incompetence, this total inability to efficiently implement programs, even though some of them may have been worth while. But that is the grand failure of the government, over four years, with respect to not all their ideas but their incapacity to implement. That is their failure.

I think it was Talleyrand who said of the French Bourbon dynasty: 'They forget nothing and they learn nothing.'

The same could be said of this loser government.

Let me just outline to the Senate how it works down there in the PMO. Some barely pubescent senior adviser down there gets a brain snap, the grander the better, because the main point is that it has to make a great, 10-second media grab and be an election slogan. That is the key: it has to make a great, 10-second media grab. It might be 'A computer for every student'—a great grab, a good idea. It might be 'A hall for every school'—a great slogan. Or it could be 'Broadband for every Australian'—another brain snap that sounds great. No thought whatsoever is given to implementation. No-one thinks through all the issues, no-one costs it and no-one does feasibility studies or business cases. Figures are just plucked out of thin air, as they have been for the last four years.

But by then, of course, it is too late. The announcement has been made, the government has been committed and the political effect has already been achieved. Then the hard work starts—or at least it should—but in, many instances, it does not or it cannot. The case in point: the National Broadband Network. Once the poor bureaucrats are sent out, with the unenviable task of giving flesh to government brain snaps, they soon discover that the govern­ment's so-called policymakers have not thought through all the implications. That is the problem. The sums initially budgeted for are grossly underestimated, time lines bear no relation to reality, there is insufficient expertise to take on the task and so its implementation has to be sub­contracted to other parties who take the money and run, unhampered of course by any form of accountability.

What the government lacks in brains—their own—they do not lack in money; the taxpayers. After all, you can always borrow more of that! 'Who cares,' says the Labor Party. Sure, you might saddle future generations with $80 billion of debt, in a little over three years. But, hey, you do not have to worry about repaying it, do you? And, in the meantime, you can grab any brief flash of glory on the off-chance that something actually goes right. Yes, you get a good headline. Call it 'The stupidity premium'—billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to pay for the fact that this government speaks and then commits taxpayers' money before it actually thinks. That is the problem. This has happened time and time again, and each time more and more money is at stake—GroceryWatch, petrol watch, pink batts, computers in schools, the BER and others. And so the list goes on. Now we face a project which dwarfs any previous infrastructure in Australia's history. This is the grand-daddy of them all, and it is in the charge of this lot.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. This is a health and safety issue. I think we are going to end up deaf in here! If the senator could just lower it a little bit, we may be able to survive this tirade.

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. Senator Mason.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With over $40 billion of taxpayers' money at risk, I will just speak up. What we now face in this country dwarfs any previous infrastructure scheme in Australia's history by far, with tens of billions of dollars to be spent on a technology that is already becoming obsolete, doing something that for most part the private sector is ready to do at no cost to the taxpayer. Again, a brain snap: no planning, no cost-benefit analysis and no business case ever made. If the past is anything to go by, and with this government it sadly is, we can expect a few things. We can expect further budget blowouts. After all, the cost of this promise has already increased tenfold since first announced in 2007. We can also expect further delays. After all, the timeline for the rollout has already stretched from five to 10 years. And we can also expect a substandard product. We can expect the worst. That way at least you will never be disappointed by this Labor government.

Debate interrupted.